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scrubl writes "China has ditched plans to force foreign and domestic computer manufacturers to install internet filtering technology in computers sold inside its borders. The Chinese government paid $5.85m to develop the software called Green Dam and claimed it was being installed to stop access to porn on computers and protect children. China's industry and information technology minister Li Yizhong said that manufacturers, Internet users, and organisations opposed to the plans had received the wrong message from his department and that installation was never planned to be compulsory."

How convenient... We just misunderstood. This had nothing to do with any public outcries whatsoever!
I don't think it would have done much good though- Kids tend to be more tech-savvy than the previous generation... and if my school's filter, and students/friends were anything to go by, it will be a minor annoyance for any kid that wants to access a blocked site.
You simply cannot win the censorship war.

What we really need is an open source project to create a newer, better filter so that China can protect its children from porn and smut. If everyone in the open source community worked together I bet we could come up with a much better product that is more cross platform than the over-priced crap they tried to implement.

What we really need as a deterrent is open education for the kids about porn. When they hit 6th grade (or whatever age they teach birds-and-bees over there), have an afternoon dedicated to Pornography Education. Explain what it is and show it to them (of course with a parents consent). Bring out a computer and a big screen and throw up lemonparty, goatse, 2girls1cup, the BME pain olympics, and whatever is on the front page of efukt that day. Explain that they've just seen the best that pornography has to offer and that the government is trying to protect them from that.

(Also, maybe check the guys for pitched tents afterword. If anybody's sporting wood, they're obviously a threat to a healthy society and need some time in 're-education camp'.)

1) I have no earthly idea what any of the terms you posted even mean, and I'm not about to research them (especially not at work, but even at home I'm just not that curious).

AND

2) I got your sig reference immediately.

But I can mix memes: I suspect if I were to be exposed to any of the subjects of those terms, I'd suddenly become Kryten, making little "memememe" noises while in utter shock before my head exploded. I'm referring to the hea

I dunno about that. The Chinese government has won the censorship war for most of the last twenty years. If people are scared enough that they self censor, the government wins. Of course this is not something you can do technologically - you pretty much need to run people over with tanks, ship them off to camps and the like. But it's sadly it is naive to say that government can't win if they are ruthless enought.

Yes, they received notification at all that this was in negotiations which was, by China's definition, inherently wrong. The citizens weren't supposed to hear about this after all.....
It just means it'll wait 6months and all of a sudden be a great idea again.
I wonder what was actually involved in this development, it seems anything that can be installed can be removed so how do you track who removed it before connecting to the internet?

If you're reading this, you're like me: you've never been wrong once in your life. Your average person isn't gonna know this because -- let's face it -- no shirt could hold all of the greatness of our beings so cut everyone else a slack if they don't know you. They're a big fat L7 and don't know how correct you always are.

But we've all been there, in that situation when a convo or situ goes south. You know what I'm talking about, you've just said something that is now correct (because you said it) but you're being presented with some "irrefutable" proof that it might have been incorrect before you said it. So here's how you deal with all the chumps that wanna waste their time disagreeing with you:

Maintain your stance, never faulter. Ex: "I said the evil organization in Contra is Red Eagle and that's because it is. I don't know where you dreamed up Red Falcon but it's Red Eagle." PROTIP: This is getting tough to do with iPhone's and that 3G shit. Leave quickly or comment on how stupid they look now if they start to pull out their phone.

Tell them it's changed since they last looked at it. Ex: "Yeah, well, I just checked the international standings yesterday and Usain Bolt is no longer the fastest man alive."

Fabricate further evidence supporting your claim. Ex: "Well, I had a beer with Steve Jobs last night and he told me personally that there was going to be an iPhone with a hologram display."

Just ignore them. You listen to the only person worth listening to: yourself.

Tell them they heard you wrong. Ex: "I never said Green Dam was going to be mandatory, I said it was going to be optional. Jesus, you totally got the wrong memo, dude."

Deny you ever said it or that it ever happened. This should be used as a last case scenario as pictures, recordings and "memories" often cause people to not like you. Ex: "Nah, brah, you're wrong. Tiananmen Square never happened. I don't know where you go that photoshopped image."

Remember, you're awesome and infallible. Never admit otherwise.

It's a good thing Bush & Cheney let me borrow their copy to provide this excerpt, I didn't have a plane ticket to go pick up the Chinese government's copy.

"It was never compulsory. It's only necessary if you don't want a death squad to stop by and make you have your 'last dance' with your musical accompaniment being a machine gun and your partner being some rounds of ammo. The kind of partner that sticks with you for life. The decision is, of course, completely up to you. We'll have a crew stop by to install the software or the bullets, your choice."

Why this sudden change in policy. Obviously, their claim of a misunderstanding is unbelievable, but what did make them change their mind about Green Dam? Does it have anything to do with the recent WTO ruling [cnn.com] on easing the controls of media imports? Was it because it was too faulty? Too difficult to implement? Or is there something even more sinister at work, like a decision to install such software at the provider level instead of the individual level?

Actually, I'd say it's a mis-spread message than misunderstood. And it's not unbelievable.
I'm not sure about what news western news/newspaper wrote on this. But on Taiwan and Mainland newspaper, at the time they just announced about the plan, the mainland government had already repeatively said that you do not have to install it. They also say even if manufacturer installed it, you can easily uninstall it. They're just thinking about forcing the manufacturers to *provide* it.
They offically said that man

They just realized that the plan is not going to work. It's not going to work because of LEGAL problems, because the "GreenDam" software was basically a pirated copy of some already available commercial filtering software with some custom modifications.

Imagine state sponsored mass copyright infringement -- do you think they can pull it off?

And the software was so full of bugs that some local security professionals here in Hong Kong had the thing reverse engineered and found a few vulnerabilities within a few nights of hacking (in their personal time). I attended a seminar where they presented their results, and the quality of the software was pathetic to the point of disbelief. Imagine the botnet size when the vulnerabilities get exploited....

Any sane person would have vetoed the project, at least in its current incarnation, even if he is hell bent on censoring everything available under the sun. It's just not feasible.

So, it is not a change of policy, just that they finally got somebody actually with brains to pull back the project.

Regarding "misunderstanding" mentioned in sibling posts -- I assure you, although sometimes people flame the Chinese government out of genuine misunderstandings, this one is definitely not one of those instances.

It clearly, unambiguously, states that pre-installation by manufacturers is required. I'll translate the last sentence:

" Tor those who do not preinstall after the deadline, those who are late in reporting (their progress) to authorities, those who falsify their reports or those who do not report, the Ministry will decree that they reissue the report or rectify their actions. "

There is no misunderstanding. And those who don't believe me, find a translator.

The GreenDam thing didn't really scream of censorship but rather incompetence. If you go past their kneejerk reactions and look at the whole thing closely, it was handled extremely incompetently. Rushed deadlines, crappy pirated software, uncoordinated plans, last minute changes, etc.

And now the excuse is as lame as everything involved in this fiasco. "Misunderstanding" my ass.

#1 the "misunderstanding" that the Chinese government is pushing for censorship through GreenDam

and

#2 the "misunderstanding" that manufacturers are required to preinstall the software on computers they ship

I really didn't think much of #1 when I wrote the above post because (this must be a gross oversight here on slashdot;-p), As I've said, I never considered it much of a censorship issue. So as a faithful slashdot

It is obvious what happened. Someone in the government who was benefitting financially from the imposition of Green Dam thought they could muscle it through. Someone with just a bit more juju who is a silent partner in a venture that's negatively impacted used the public outcry (which would normally be ignored) as a lever to squash Mr. Lesser Juju without him losing too much face. Had their little commercial spat gotten too public, it would have revealed in an even more obvious fashion how corrupt the In

Now the children's minds will become corrupted by images of porn....and democracy.

Don't forget alternate viewpoints of history and historical events. Who was right, who was wrong and what exactly happened seem to be fairly touchy subjects with the Chinese government. Even current news -- like the Khmer Rouge trials -- needs a meticulously spun delivery [reuters.com] to be worthy of public scrutiny in China. Nothing's wrong with that, I just hope the citizens have the right to read about the trial through other outlets like... say... Cambodia's.

That's the tip of the iceberg. There are loads of situations where most of the Chinese population know the Chinese government is guilty of vast crimes but they also know that even alluding to it obliquely will get you locked up if someone informs on you.

I would always be cautious of any claims made by the PRC. Their concept of innovation is copying the concepts created and payed for by western companies. To be fair though, most countries would do that if they were in China's position.

The decade of the 1960's in the USA was the time when the young people of the USA finally got fed up with endless war, systemic racism, and lying government. The older generations just could not understand why these 'hippie scum' would not conform to the older generation's idea of 'normal'.

When will the same thing happen in China? When will the youth decide not to sign up for a lifetime of back breaking labor for low pay? When will the youth of the different ethnic groups in China begin inter-marrying

It is true America retreated to fear based reactions to 9/11. However, the correction for the excesses of the Bush administration was to peacefully elect the first black President in USA history. The wild times of the 60's are not needed in this country any longer because the foundations of tolerance and liberalism laid out in the sixties are more or less permanent

Ya, I remember watching it on TV in 1989. I cried. They can't use that solution forever. It worked in 1989 as a short term band aid, but someday the tank drivers will refuse to crush the heads of the nation's children.

> someday the tank drivers will refuse to crush the heads of the nation's children.

From what I've read the soldiers from near Beijing did. There were pictures of trucks full of tanks that ran into people lying in the road and stopped. The students aparently went and negotiated with them and they turned back.

At this point there was more or less a coup. Zhao Ziyang who had sympathized with the students was removed as leader and placed under house arrest. The new Chinese government got armoured divisions wh

When there are people, there is power. You can win wars by sheer numbers -- a few tanks cannot keep a billion people under control. Heck, even military officers are humans. They are not killing machines, but humans who can and would be swayed and deflect too. (and you and GP illustrated that already)

This is probably what most people don't understand when trying to differentiate "armed soldiers" with "innocent civilians".

Wow so if say Americans had demonstrated in favour of Obama and against Bush were counter revolutionaries and Bush would have been entitled to crush them? Really? Any demonstration against the government is "counter revolutionary" and should be crushed with extreme violence.

The fact that Chinese people believe things like this explains why the Chinese government is so murderous and China is so backward.

Yet another slashdotter who has "misunderstood" Australia's political system. There has never been a mandatory filter nor will there ever be one, it's simply a political game the two major parties play in order to castrate independent senators.

The existing filter is only mandatory for government owned computers (schools, libraries, etc), it's OPT-IN for private citizens. Note that there are a minority of people who do want to use it, ~5% of users have opted in.

The last case of genuine censorship I can recall was when they took down the web site of an MP because it had broken anti-right-to-die legislation. The servers were unplugged because they boke Australian law, the site shifted to a NZ host and was up again the next day. At no time was the

Thank goodness for the spambot writers and other criminals. China couldn't care less about the censorship and Internet freedom moaning and groaning. They didn't want to turn the country into a giant botnet from the gaping security holes [umich.edu] in Green Dam.